youry

I phoned to a respectible local (Belgium) engine tuning company to find out what sort of power increase I could expect from a Motronic upgrade on my RS4 B7, and the news I learned are depressive !
I would even say shocking !

They had so far 3 RS4 V8 that were dynoed and nono of them came even close to the power figures announced by AUDI... the best one had 390 crank HP and the worst 380 crank HP....Just to be sure i am not talking about the power at the wheels so comparing crank HP which is what AUDI is talking about....

He said he probably could explaign 5 at the most 10hp because of the transmission loss that is not measurable due the variable torque system in the Quattro of this RS4, the rest of the transmission losses are taken into account...

Worst the S4 V8 never have the 344 Hp, lots of them do not reach even 300.. one of their customers had 290 HP on his S4. This is 54 HP less than announced or roughly 15 % lower which is not acceptable. He took a lawyer, fighted against AUDI for a year, and won his case an got a new S4 V8, but after a dyno test he had won 10 Hp.... there is a clear issue with Audi's communication startegy on these 4.2 V8 S4 and RS4

My contact phoned to many of their German contacts engine tuners which confirmed these bad results for the NEW RS4 V8, not a single tuning company in Germany has found a RS4 V8 to show more than 400 HP at the crank yet........

Guys you live in the country of customer service and where customer rights are higher than in europe.

So all the RS4 owners, please go make a dyno test and report to this forum the results....

IF we can confirm this , there is a case to stop AUDI from working with Marketing personnel that have no barriers ot exageration in their promotion.

I will try to make a dyno test ASAP...... (I will wait a little more mile as my car has only 800 miles so too little to have all the engine power available yet...

But you guys go ahead and lets us know if this is a real issue or not....

I do not plan to let AUDI get away with this. We pay cash these cars to get cars that meet specifications. Being an ISO 9000 company they have procedures and manufacturing practices that should provide engine specs that are in the middle of the variance, in other words, it is logical to expect that all engine will not give precisely 420 HP, but there should be as much engines providing over 420 Hp as engines providing less.... and not systematically less than 400 hp, which for me is abuse of the customer....

Let me know your thoughts....

AudisAPlenty

Unfortunatley there are alot of variables to measuring engine power and documenting and proving them can be more expensive than buying a different car. Dynomometers, and operating environment can cause variations in readings, so unless someone can exactly duplicate the method by which Audi rates their engines, any sort of litigation would probably be fruitless. I've read articles in which other manufacturers over rate their engines, in fact most if not all companies do this to some extent. Even if an RS4 is dynoed at 390 horsepower, this is a tad more than 8 percent off of it's rated power, which can easily be caused by environmental factors such as intake air temps, humidity, and even fuel.

Grouse:3.Slow

most with a b6-b7 s4 say they become a different car after 10k in miles.

youry

yap you are right !

youry

the first two RS4 where measured very early and had 380hp so these engines were clearly not break in yet...

the third one was after 5000 miles so I would say that iti is likely that not much more power can come after that, ans that one was measured at 390 Hp

Grouse:3.Slow

it would not have had it some of the post break in flashing and ecu work done.

as i said people with the s4 say it is a different car after 10k

koz4.2

recently. When confronted, they owned up to it, and offered to either buy back the cars, or some sort of rebate/free accessory/free service package. So, if this is true about the RS4 engine, Audi will have to do domething about it.

Koz.

youry

With some data we will find out the truth, but cars being pretty new its difficult to have concistent data yet